Kings Highway Genealogy

07/02/2025

Ancestry released their DNA cluster tool tonight after several months of anticipation and build up.

It's useless. I'm so disappointed.

06/12/2025

Well said.

Last week we received an excellent question about Acadian ancestry, heritage, and identity—a question that surfaces every now and then, and with good reason.

The person asked, "How is one's Acadian descent/heritage determined?" They followed up by asking about paternal versus maternal ancestry and how much stock we should place in family names.

This was the gist of our response:

Historically, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, census takers would list a person's ancestry based on the origin of their father. It was an easy shortcut, but it silenced the whole maternal side of the family. We know that women played the most essential role in raising young children, so their culture and heritage would likely have the most influence (hence why we speak of a maternal tongue). As for the ancestral or genetic angle, there is no reason to give more importance to one parent's side over the other. A person's genetic baggage is a messy mix of both sides.

Last names can also be misleading. A person's last name might be Cyr (which is Acadian), but a majority of their great-grandparents might be French-Canadian... or Scots-Irish.

As with most ethnic, ancestral, and cultural groups, there is no clear, agreed-upon standard for claiming an Acadian identity. At the Archives, we can trace a person's ancestry, but we don't have the context to tell people how they should identify. We simply provide visitors with the tools or basic facts about their family history and it is up to them to decide whether they can claim an identity.

To give you an example, I have Scots-Irish ancestors, but I have to go back five generations to find them. I didn't grow up with that culture. Accordingly, I tell people I have Scots-Irish roots, but I don't feel comfortable calling myself Scots-Irish, especially when other folks have grown up in such communities. Similarly, many present-day Quebeckers are descendants of Pierre Miville dit Le Suisse, but he died more than 350 years ago and I would find it uncomfortable to claim to be Swiss. I think we can extend that to Acadian, Indigenous, or any other ancestors. This is partly because culture and heritage are more important than ancestry (strictly defined) in the making of a person's identity. However, there is a broad range of opinions on this.

I suppose the short answer is that we shouldn't rely only on last names alone or on one parent's side exclusively. Ultimately, once you have explored your roots, it's up to you to determine what has made you—hopefully while recognizing the complex mixing of origins and cultures over the course of many, many generations.

06/03/2025

So many people looking at a spinning circle last night!!!

04/22/2025

How I often feel about Ancestry Dots and the Leeds Method! 🤣🤣

04/06/2025

Genealogy writing is technical writing. 🤣

03/24/2025

Yes, we know.

Every online forum for genealogy is getting multiple posts as members wake up in each time zone, hear the news and immediately post as if we haven't been discussing this possibility for months. People are posting without even looking to see the simple fact that twenty-five other people have already shared their "breaking" news.

23AndMe has filed for bankruptcy protection.

No, they aren't selling your individual DNA information to the Wuhan Institute of Technology.

No, your DNA isn't about to be cloned. Think about it a minute...if they were going to clone people, would they really start with you?

Yes, their website is still up. This is bankruptcy protection, and the company will be bought by another company; just like Ancestry was bought, just like GEDMatch was bought.

Be responsible for how you keep yourself informed, and, as Douglas Adams once wrote, "Don't Panic."

02/13/2025

12/29/2024

When I was a youngster, I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house. She was twice widowed and lived with her sister-in-law from her second marriage. My "Aunt Hazel" was born in 1896 and lived a keen and observant life well into my high school years.

Researching her ancestry tonight, I learned that as a young girl she lived with HER grandmother. Mary Ann Ricker lost two husbands in two years during the Civil War, had eleven children, and was born almost two hundred years ago, in 1833.

To think that one person connects me to the frontier years of the upper Kennebec River Valley of the early nineteenth century shows that the distant past isn't really all that distant.

Tonight, we're shining a light on the history that made me...what history connects you?

12/23/2024

As we slide (some of us on the ice) towards Christmas, and facing a morning temperature here of 1.2 degrees above zero, it feels right to share one from my favorite poet, Robert Frost. I had always connected with his work, and after building out my family tree, I can see that it was for than more than one reason...we share several common ancestors in our Colonial New England trees.

Shining a light on the history that made us....who are YOU related to?

https://youtu.be/eA2dz_z-e9E?si=stLQNMcQqn9Aggra

12/08/2024

Or more than one…..

Look.

11/07/2024

One more reason to love the information contained in census records. Fiction can never hold a candle not only to historical truths, but also historical humor!

09/05/2024

Genealogists love to talk far longer than their audiences want to listen, but some choices are important. Getting the most out of your DNA testing starts with picking the right test; read more in our series of blog posts: "Shining a Light on the DNA That Made Us."

“Choosing a Genetic DNA Test…and Why”, the second part of “Shining a Light on the DNA That Made Us”; a series about how to maximize your genetic DNA test results from Kings Highway Genealogy.